


Scales

by rabbitheartbeats



Series: Ink and Quill [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Au Ra Lore head canons, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dangerous Cuddling - Au Ra have horns you know, F/M, Fluff, No beta - we just die, Nothing explicit but stuff is implied, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Shadowbringers Spoilers, scales - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24823678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitheartbeats/pseuds/rabbitheartbeats
Summary: A lazy morning for the saviours of the realm.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: Ink and Quill [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1465468
Kudos: 47





	Scales

The Crystal Exarch startles awake with a sharp stabbing pain in his side. For a moment, he panics as he is rudely brought to awareness. He would tell the Ascian nothing. Not now or ever. It would not matter what the creature of darkness wearing the visage of the founder of the Garlean Empire did to him - the secrets in the bowels of the Crystal Tower would accompany him to his grave. 

“Mmmm… Raha,” a soft breath and another jab of pain - and G’raha Tia is brought to the present, finding himself not in chains amidst the ruins of a cold illusory city, but rather upon a soft mattress with a warm, living and breathing body in bed with him.

He glances down to find Yesui ‘Moxi’ Kahkol, Warrior of Light and Darkness, Hero of both Source and First Shards of Hydaelyn wrapped around him. He finds the source of the stabbings easily enough, as his inspiration burrows deeper into his chest, her dark pointed horns digging into parts of his still human body, the rough scales rubbing against flesh and crystal alike as she snuggles in closer murmuring his name in her sleep.

While it is not exactly comfortable, he does not move from his position. 

Au Ra rubbed their horns - organs that were more sensitive than their sturdy appearance suggested - against individuals they were close to as a sign of affection and trust. 

So while G’raha Tia was certainly no Au Ra and was not possessed of horns or scales, should his beloved hero decide to subconsciously display her affection for him through attempted gorings, he would suffer through it with dignity. 

The years have made him a stranger to intimacy, the smallest compliment, or even merely a whisper of his name from his Warrior enough to leave him flustered and desperately wishing to hide his face again. Especially when he recalls - often at the most inopportune moments - the way she calls his name in the throes of pleasure.

It had never been his intention to bed the Warrior of Light - well he could not quite say _never_. G'raha Tia had most certainly entertained multiple thoughts of Moxi Kahkol in his bed as a young man in Mor Dhona, but the Crystal Exarch had not thought it even a remote possibility and had actively tried to avoid thinking about the extent of his feelings for the Auri adventurer. He was centuries old and should everything go according to plan, he would be dead with his beloved hero none the wiser as to his identity.

It hadn't happened that way of course, he had mucked it all up and if not for his dear adventurer's stubbornness and love, none of them would be alive at all.

He hadn't been expecting anything to happen between them...it had been years - centuries for him in fact, he had thought firmly and quietly to himself. 

Once upon a time, the Champion of Eorzea had regarded him with utmost affection - she had given G'raha Tia her real name after all on a star-lit evening at the top of the Crystal Tower- and he had been the _stupidest_ boy in all Eorzea to have not picked up on the significance of the gesture until _literal_ centuries later.

So on that day when duty had called her back to the Source, and the two of them were truly alone with one another for the first time since that fateful afternoon atop the cliffs of Kholusia, G’raha Tia held his tongue.

They could not pick up from where they had left off, because nothing had been started he reasoned.

Surely she had moved on from that young, _incredibly stupid_ , Sharlayan scholar with mismatched eyes. History had documented her as being close with Ser Haurchefant Greystone until his death and she had many an admirer throughout Eorzea. 

She couldn't possibly still love him.

So when the Crystal Exarch opened the portal between the First and the Source he had been caught off guard by the sharp tug on his collar and the gentle press of soft lips on his own. 

_“I’ll be back_ , _”_ she had promised, her cheeks dusted pink with embarrassment as she stepped through and beyond his reach.

Oh, how his face and soul had _burned_ after that. 

When she had returned to the First a week later, the Crystal Exarch had put together a fifteen page essay on how loving him was a terrible idea. He loved her - foolishly, desperately, with all of his entire being - but he was not the young man she had fallen in love with five years and a few centuries ago. She deserved someone who could travel with her, fight at her side and protect her. Not an idiotic old man tied to an Allagan relic. 

She had tossed aside each and every one of his arguments about how laying her affections on an old, half-crystal Miqo'te was an ill-advised venture with tears and a verbosity he had not seen before in her. 

For a woman known for her stoic and silent nodding, she had a rather extensive and colourful vocabulary.

It did not matter if it was ‘bone headed’ or ‘dumber than a goobue’s mossy arse’, she had declared. Neither of them are who they used to be, but beneath the titles, the accolades, the scars of both flesh and the soul, she is Yesui Kahkol and he is G'raha Tia.

She wants him and no other. 

A declaration of love punctuated with a kiss that was mayhaps a little too hungry and wanton to put in a fairytale.

And that, had been that. The Crystal Exarch learned rather abruptly that day in the Ocular that he was incredibly liable to confess any and every secret he had ever held, so long as Yesui - as she insisted he call her - had her hands on him.

G’raha Tia was finding that he wasn’t quite so old as he had thought when pulled into her embrace and bed. Physically, he was still a young man in his prime and he is finding that being with Yesui was making him feel as if he truly was twenty-four years old again. 

Actually he's not sure if even in his prime that he would be able to keep up with his Warrior's near insatiable - but incredibly flattering - desire for him were he not gifted with the boundless energies of the Crystal Tower.

He knew that he was not the first to take the Warrior of Light to bed, but he is the first, she has told him through fevered kisses, the very first she has taken to hers. 

G'raha Tia has no intention of letting her ever consider taking a second.

He lifts his crystal hand and gently sifts its fingers through her long silver hair, his touch ghosting over the dark coloured horns that are digging into his flesh. 

His Warrior had been looking a little under the weather these past few days - her skin and scales cracking in places. Uncomfortable and tired, but breathtakingly lovely in the first few rays of the morning sun nonetheless.

She makes a small noise of contentment and stirs as she wakes, stabbing him once more with her horns as her eyes blink open.

“Good morning,” he smiles, pushing himself up onto his elbows, wincing a little as he adjusts himself to lessen the sting. Her sleep-addled smile is incredibly endearing and he presses a gentle kiss to her hair.

“Good morning G’raha Tia,” she murmurs as her arms come up to pull him back down and drag him with her back into sleep.

“Now now,” he chides her as he resists her sleepy smile and the call of his name as he fends her hands away from him. “You promised to show Ryne your pie crust recipe, and lest you forget, you were to visit the pixies and your [ _lovely branch_ ] this afternoon.”

“Blehh,” Yesui Kahkol declares as she promptly burrows her face into the pillows, and G’raha feels her tail whip about in displeasure beneath the sheets. “Don’t wanna get up.” she whines.

"Duty calls, hero." he reminds her lightly.

"But it's so _early_ ," she complains into the pillow. "The sun’s barely up Raha!"

G'raha Tia has rather vivid memories of a young Auri adventurer bustling about a shared tent in Mor Dhona at the most ridiculous hours of the morning yelling at him about how he was wasting the day away, and marvels at how time has certainly changed them both.

“The Champion of Eorzea laid low by the small hand of the clock,” G’raha declares jokingly. “Behold the sole true weakness of the saviour of the First: the early morning sun.”

“I’ll show _you_ weakness,” she declares as she promptly reaches over lightning quick with reflexes honed over a thousand battles in an attempt to ruffle his hair and tug on his ears. He rolls away, ducking his head and dodging her grasping hands.

They are hardly comporting themselves as one would expect of an illustrious hero of legend and the mysterious sorcerer who had founded the Crystarium, as a pillow goes flying and laughter echoes through the room. 

Through use of trickery and the intimate knowledge that the Warrior of Light and Darkness was incredibly ticklish, G’raha gains the upper hand and has her pinned beneath him. She is giggling uncontrollably and G’raha cannot help but to tease her as he licks a stripe up the scales that cover her nose and brow.

“Ack!” he gags. He promptly rolls off of her, scrubbing at his mouth and lurches off the bed in search of the glass and water pitcher on the bedside table.

“Are you alright?” she asks, as he spits what had gotten into his mouth.

A handful of small dark scales and large flakes of clear skin greet him in his hand. 

“Are _you_ alright?” he turns the question on her as he shows her what is in his spoken hand.

Yesui lets out a high-pitched nervous giggle and tries to hide her face behind her hands. 

“Ummm...oops?” she says peeking at him through her fingers embarrassedly. “I forgot. It's that time of year and I meant to get Mitsu to help with it before I came back, but things got so busy and well it didn’t seem all that important in the grand scheme of things - what with the Ruby Weapon and all - so I didn’t really manage to get much done in terms of-,” she babbles nervously.

“My love,” he interrupts her as he uses his crystal hand to move her hands away from her face, “Do you need me to help with your molt?” he asks, and for a moment her expression is almost scandalized. 

“T-that’s not,” she splutters for a moment before she flushes crimson as she looks at him bashfully. “Yes. Please.”

* * *

This is somehow one of the most embarrassing things she has ever done, and she had walked into a serious Ishgardian war meeting once in little more than her nightshirt. 

This really shouldn't be such a big deal, she thinks. 

Molting was a simple fact of life for Au Ra, and something that happened to each and every one of them with the turn of the seasons. 

She sits on the edge of the bed -still in her sleepwear - as G'raha Tia goes about helping her remove the old outermost layer of her scales.

Her discomfort and embarrassment, she thinks at least, is that she still sees the peeling of old scales and skin as a ritual reserved for parents - at least it was such among many Xaela tribes on the Steppe. It had been the one parental duty her biological father had taken seriously if she recalled correctly. 

Many tribes had all sorts of traditions with old scales. The Orben used their scales to make the finest boats in Othard, the Qalli were said to use their shedded scales to create musical instruments, and many tribes incorporated an infant's first scales into their clothing. Her birth tribe of the Tumet had an oddly sentimental tradition of parents taking a scale from their ten-year old children and making an amulet of sorts with it before tying their offspring to the sacred tree. A keepsake, lest their nameless child not make it back.

Both of her mothers, the one who had died bringing her into the world and the one who had saved her, had shown her how to weave old scales into protective amulets and into clothing - prayers to Nhaama that she might shield her children from the dangers of the Steppe. She recalls the odd looks she had gotten amongst the Tumet for knowing foreign tribe patterns and traditions- yet another odd thing about Amasar’s daughter they would say - and her father would simply accept the tokens and wards she’d weaved together to protect him with nary a word, only to discard them every time the tribe packed up and moved to their next pasture. 

A stark contrast to the way the Kahkol had smiled and marvelled at their little wanderer’s skill with thread and needle and shown her patterns their own lost tribes had taught them. Her mother had bragged uproariously about how Yesui was the prettiest and most talented Xaela on the Steppe. 

She did not know if the Raen had any of their own traditions in dealing with their molts, but then she had never asked.

Her molts had technically been easiest to manage in Kugane, where Au Ra were commonplace and the whole thing was nothing more than a seasonal annoyance - like allergies or a woman's moonblood. City folk did not put much stock in the traditions of the Azim Steppe and she remembers quite clearly how much she had hated molt days in the Rakuza District.

The Blooming Peony took extra care to make sure that all of its merchandise appeared flawless and would spend three days a season throwing coin at the Bokairo Inn to ensure their scaled products were scrubbed to perfection.

She had hated those days, and it had been absolutely liberating to _not_ be wrestled out of her clothes and picked and plucked over by strangers the first time her molt came around during her first summer as a pirate. The peeling scales making her supremely unattractive to the rest of the ship had been a bonus.

The itch had been maddening though.

Later when she had finally made herself a home in Eorzea and amongst the Quills, molting was something that was utterly foreign to the rest of them and she did her best to not trouble them with it. 

Cece had tried to help once, but the wound she had caused after ripping off a scale that had not needed removing had her refusing to let the Lalafell near her tail for a month. 

The male members of the crew had found it incredibly uncomfortable, given how all areas that she required the most assistance with were around her tail and hindquarters. As Captain of the Quills however, Loetstymm Fhrubryt took charge of the situation and helped her as best he could, but the man was so unnerved and uncomfortable every time, that she preferred to simply avoid requesting aid unless the situation was dire.

So up until they had made it to Ishgard and the Quills had added Mitsu to their number, she had dealt with it as best as she could herself - which was to say not very well at all. Some places were just hard to reach.

The Raen had been scandalized about the state of her tail, the horror her personal grooming had elicited outstripped only by Sidurgu Orl and the utterly deplorable state of the dark knight’s cracked and flaking scales.

“Ah!” an embarrassingly loud noise of surprise and relief escapes her lips as G’raha removes a particularly thick layer of scale from her foot. The way he expertly strips the flaking skin, massages the base of the scales before easing them off feels extraordinarily pleasurable - a feeling she has never associated with her molts. The new layers are somewhat softer and slightly more sensitive than normal and the way G'raha runs his hands over the new scales nearly sends her to the stars.

And he hadn’t even started on her tail.

“Is everything all right?” he asks and she looks down from her seat to glare at the smug grin he is struggling and failing to conceal as he hooks a cool crystal hand behind her knee to steady her trembling limb. 

“I - I’m _fine_!” she declares, biting her lip to stifle herself as he gently, but firmly rubs the next patch up her leg. 

She was used to molts being a far more clinical procedure. Mitsu usually went about the whole process as if it were a chore, like putting on makeup or combing his hair. The Raen man usually merely cracked the old layers and promptly tore the old skin and scales off, dislodging and removing any stragglers with quick and rapid movements, and she tried to emulate the same when she helped the Auri man with his.

G'raha though. What G'raha Tia was doing to her was definitely not that. 

G'raha sat on the floor in front of the bed, her leg trapped in his arms as he gently and dare she say it - sensually removes her scales.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Ah well,” G’raha says somewhat nervously from his seat on the floor and a flicker of jealousy burns like acid in her throat. Who, when and why? she longs to demand as he opens his mouth to speak.

“When I joined myself with the Tower,” he starts as the pressure on her foot lessens somewhat. “The crystallization of my body was - gradual. It was not terribly painful, more unnerving than anything." he informs her as he carefully plucks off a particularly stubborn piece.

“But the Ironworks used what techniques they could think of to help relieve my discomfit. One of the Auri members hypothesized that the transformation was superficial and attempted something similar to the descaling process on my arm. It did not work, but I learned the general process.” he smiles benignly at her as he sends a frisson of pleasure through her as he runs a nail along the sensitive flesh between skin and scale on her leg.

"I have of course, adapted their teachings somewhat to the situation." A mischievous smirk growing on his face - a sure sign of trouble with this man.

“That I can use their knowledge to aid you is a privilege I take great pleasure in,” he adds as he presses his lips to her knee.

Her tail stiffens in embarrassment, a reaction she tries but fails to suppress and the knowing grin on her Raha’s face shows that he most definitely noticed. 

“Though I must say, you are the only one I've seen react like this. You're rather sensitive," he remarks, rising to his knees, his hands sliding under the hem of her night gown to run his fingers along the scales at her hips and she lets out an extremely undignified noise. 

"T-That's! It's been a while since I've done this and it's never felt like- _Ah!"_ Her voice breaks on a cry as her lover trails gentle fingers over the sensitive base of her tail.

“You mentioned that Master Yumishi assists with your molts?” he asks, the crystal of his cheek rubbing against her and she’s not sure if he’s mistaken in that tiny hint of jealousy colouring his voice.

She laughs a little at that.

“Pfft, I can assure you there is absolutely nothing sensual about the way Mitsu does it. He’s lucky T’chev likes things rough, because he’s not exactly the gentlest of - _oh!_ ” she squeaks as he pushes her down onto the bed. “I thought you - _mmm!_ \- said that duty calls!” 

“It’s still early," he counters as his hands make quick work of the ties on her underwear. “And your tail still needs tending to.” 

If this was how all of her molts were going to go, she thinks she may actually start looking forward to them.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe one day. One day. I will write actual smut - it doesn't seem likely to be any time soon, but maybe one day.
> 
> The Warrior of Darkness ends up late for her baking class with Ryne. The girl had readily accepted her profuse apologies about sleeping in, but Urianger won't look her _or_ the Exarch in the eye for some reason.
> 
> The Xaela lore and stuff is just things I made up.


End file.
